Posted on 11/23/2009 11:15:34 AM PST by neverdem
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Asia trip was not worth Obama's time. Leslie H. Gelb on why the president should shake up his foreign policy team—and make sure the deals are done before he leaves home.
President Obama’s nine-day trip to Asia is worth a look back to fix two potent problems, past and future. First, the trip’s limited value per day of presidential effort suggests a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power. On top of the inexcusably clumsy review of Afghan policy and the fumbling of Mideast negotiations, the message for Mr. Obama should be clear: He should stare hard at the skills of his foreign-policy team and, more so, at his own dominant role in decision-making. Something is awry somewhere, and he’s got to fix it.
Secondly, the Asia trip presented an important opportunity to carve out a new American leadership role in the world’s most dynamic economic region, and Mr. Obama missed it. He only scratched the surface in his calls for multilateralism and mutual understanding. He needs to paint pictures of how Washington will help solve regional security and trade problems. Otherwise, most Asian nations will continue their unwanted drift toward China and away from the United States.
A meditation on his journey should start by forgetting half of the last week’s commentary. Unbelievably, some criticized Obama for not getting China to “throw its weight around.” What Asian leaders want that? None that I know of. Others lamented that Obama couldn’t make “demands” on China anymore. The presumption here is that China is now king, and that Washington can no longer have its way with Beijing. The facts are that Washington never did boss Beijing around, and that China is not now ruling the roost (more accurately, it’s sitting on its own eggs). Others contended that Obama continued his pattern of trashing America’s friends and coddling its authoritarian enemies like China. It’s hard to stomach this nonsense from the same conservative crowd that forever praised George W. Bush for accommodating China and alienating America’s allies.
Some analysts played fair and acknowledged that administration officials tried to tell reporters not to expect “deliverables” on the trip, and to see the journey more as a recognition of Asia’s new importance and America’s desire for a new co-operative spirit. That’s a commendable thought, but hardly justification for almost two weeks of the president’s time (when you consider preparations)— especially when he’s got a tanking economy, health-care reform woes, and decisions to make on Afghanistan. Presidents take trips like this one only when they need breakthroughs and accomplishments on certain issues that can’t be agreed on without the pressure of an impending presidential visit. In fact, most presidents wouldn’t even commit to trips abroad without knowing that key deals would be finally agreed on and announced during the visit itself. The prospective visit is the power jackhammer to nail down the deals. Just take a gander at trips planned for Richard Nixon by Henry Kissinger or for George H. W. Bush by James Baker.
Obama’s travels were a chance to settle or make concrete progress on thorny issues like greenhouse-gas emissions, and the fate of U.S. bases on Okinawa, which the new Japanese government insists on moving. It was time to announce ways to gain fixes on the U.S.-South Korean trade treaty, long stalled in Congress. It was a moment to show that Beijing would actually make some mutually beneficial compromises on exchange rates or economic sanctions against Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Absent guarantees of progress on issues such as these, Mr. Obama should have taken a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii.
Matters were made worse on the scene. It was not good optics for Obama to bow to Japan’s emperor. He seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably, as with his bow to the Saudi King some months ago. And it was truly unfortunate that Obama and his aides didn’t flatly insist that he be allowed to address the Chinese people directly on television and meet with non-stacked Chinese groups—as has been the case during previous presidential visits. Beijing’s leaders obviously didn’t feel confident enough of their own standing at home to give the popular Mr. Obama such access. But he and his team should have made it a precondition of the visit. Its absence left an unhappy taste.
The Asia trip presented an important opportunity to carve out a new American leadership role in the world’s most dynamic economic region, and Mr. Obama missed it.
The White House might try to blame the State Department (such an easy and delicious target) for the missteps. But State’s role in the conceptual planning of the trip was not central, and the department’s senior Asia hand, Kurt Campbell, surely knew better. It’s also hard to tar the National Security Council’s own senior Asia expert, Jeff Bader, another pro like Campbell. Perhaps even higher officials at the NSC dropped the ball. Perhaps Mr. Obama might take responsibility himself, as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Now, that would truly clear the air—and open the door to some obvious and necessary changes in the administration’s decision-making machinery. Every decision, large and small, is shaped and made by the president himself and enforced by Denis McDonough, a deputy NSC adviser and the administration’s Lord High Executioner. Does Obama get enough pushback? Is he hearing a range of views? Can he see that his powerful intellect might profit from bowing to the voices of experience? If Mr. Obama reflects on the Asia journey and other mishaps, he might loosen the reins and bring in additional policy and diplomatic pros as inside counselors or outside advisers.
If most Asia hands inside and outside the government had designed the Obama trip, here’s what they would have advised: Go beyond the usual and trite message of building mutual understanding and cooperation, and stop invoking the God of Multilateralism without spelling out America’s leadership role. Asia is now overflowing with multilateral organizations. Washington is a member of a few key ones, like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Asian Development Bank. But that has little to do with other new and key groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China, Uzbekistan, etc.) and ASEAN, the association of Southeast Asian nations. Asian nations are increasingly organizing themselves into these groups, and Washington hasn’t really figured out its role. Most Asian nations want that role to be a prominent one—in fact, the leadership position. They’re afraid of China, afraid that China won’t be as attentive to their concerns in the future as America was in the past. At the same time, they don’t want Washington to come into these groupings and cause problems with Beijing. They want Washington to figure out a leadership position constructed on the proven American ability to help solve common problems in the common interest. They want an America they remember, one that can get things done and doesn’t let problems fester.
That U.S. policy was the main missing ingredient on Obama’s trip. Washington played architect and solidified its leadership in Europe after World War II with NATO, the Marshall Plan, and various trade and economic organizations like the World Bank. Asian nations are yearning for the same kind of creativity today from a brilliant American president in the new Pacific Era.
Now the left is seeing what an idiot this guy is. What a poor excuse of a whatever he truly is.
What do you mean amateur hour? In this admin it’s 24/7.
Yes, very good smack down.
Really? His "powerful intellect"? Really???
I haven't seen any evidence of that.
Someone ought to cut and paist a photo of the book “Foreign policy for DUMMIES”
When Obama nominated Hillary as SecState, I commented on FR that she would screw it up royally. Her management skills suck, as demonstrated by everything she’s ever touched. And the author’s comment about Obama’s powerful intellect is just flat wrong. If he’s so all-fired smart, why is that it’s “Amateur Hour at the White House”...Hmmmmm?
This is exactly what I’ve been saying.
“and make sure the deals are done before he leaves home.”
That’s the crux, the nub, the central point.
NO PRESIDENT should ever attend a summit meeting until all the preliminary preparations have been nailed down. That is elementary politics 101.
Not only for the sake of our country, which Obama couldn’t care less about, but for his own image and reputation, which are centrally important to him. You don’t go to a summit meeting on spec. You don’t go to have an interesting talk. You go to confirm what has already been decided beforehand.
Obama is a turkey.
“...his powerful intellect ...”
Standards are really, really low in the political “science” and public “service” world.
Usually, eating and breathing without help suffice for entrance.
Yup, all those rounds of golfs, can wear a guy down...
Mr. Obama can take the 3 years off on vacation... While in Hawaii he could devote his time hunting for the missing Birth Certificate... We know its there ... somewhere...
...and make sure the deals are done before he leaves home.
This isn't difficult to understand but it may be over the head of someone who is apparently convinced that celebrity can get him by. The President is not a negotiator. He does not travel to foreign countries to see what he can do, he travels to put a visual stamp of approval that is his presence on programs already worked out in detail by either the State Department or by a separately-identified team. That's how all effective heads of state operate, American or otherwise.
What this betrays is a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works at an international level, and it is ironic that a leading internationalist ideologue could be so very misinformed and handle the job so clumsily. Certainly he cannot look to his Secretary of State to make up the missing experience - Hillary Clinton hasn't any. But surely someone at some point is going to muster up the courage to pluck the boss's sleeve and let him know that this sort of thing was worked out during the first Washington administration, and that an awful lot of foreign leaders are sort of assuming that he knows that.
LOL!
The guy who has to read a teleprompter to communicate basic ideas is a powerful intellect?
“the president should shake up his foreign policy team:
That would assume the president is actually running this monstrosity of a show.
Only the teleprompter knows.
The problem is that Mr. Obama is exactly what's awry.
He's not just an amateur, he's a juvenile amateur who is completely out of his depth. Worse, the folks with whom he's dealing know exactly where the problem is, and how to take advantage of it.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
If you want to understand what Obama will do in any given situation first remember twho things. First: mentally, Obama is still about 19 years old -- naive and still in thrall to the ideology he learned as a child; and second, Obama is a narcissist, and as such believes that it is enough for him to say something, and it will turn out the way he wants it to.
Folks love to come up with complex conspiracies about Obama, but it's not necessary. Not that this is much comfort -- I think a wily, conspiratorial Obama would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than the one we've actually got. After all, a conspirator's first impulse is always geared toward self-preservation, which requires him to deal practically with the world as it is; whereas a naive narcissist is not even in contact with the real world.
The optimist in me says, well, we survived Carter, so won't we survive this? The pessimist says, this putz is so much worse than Jimmuh.
Forget his foreign policy team, the problem is very easy to spot, Obama just has to stare hard into the mirror and stop falling in love with his own reflection.
Entertainment by the Singing Cows?
It will turn into ‘Beat the Clock’ soon
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